Ray Ison, Professor in Systems at the UK Open University since 1994, is a member of the Applied Systems Thinking in Practice Group. From 2008-15 he also developed and ran the Systemic Governance Research Program at Monash University, Melbourne. In this blog he reflects on contemporary issues from a systemic perspective.

Tuesday, November 22, 2016

It is with great sadness that we are writing to you to announce that Jay
W. Forrester, Professor of Management Emeritus at MIT, has died at the
age of 98.

A full obituary is now available in the New York Times. Further information is available via the System Dynamics Society homepage.

Many of us have memories we cherish and want to share about Jay and we
know that members of the System Dynamics community are posting their
thoughts and reflections on various social media. We would ask everyone
to consider visiting the webpage
dedicated to Jay and click on “comments” to write there about how Jay
touched your life. This page is for us all. Write what you want others
to see and hear. We will all gain from our memories of Jay.

Jay founded what became the field of System Dynamics in 1956 and has had
a profound and lasting influence on it throughout its 60-year history. A lifelong innovator, Jay was a pioneer in digital computing
and helped create the computer age in which we all live today. Trained
in electrical engineering, Jay came to MIT in 1939, where he worked on
feedback control servomechanisms during World War II. After the war, Jay
directed the MIT Digital Computer Laboratory, where he led the design
and construction of Whirlwind I,
one of the world’s first high-speed digital computers. He invented and
holds the patent for magnetic core memory, the dominant form of random
access memory (RAM) for decades (even travelling to the moon with the
Apollo astronauts), until it was eventually replaced by semiconductors. Whirlwind became the basis for many innovations, from numerically controlled machine tools to SAGE, the first integrated continental air defense system.

Invited to join the faculty of the MIT Sloan School of Management in
1956, Jay created the field of system dynamics to apply engineering
concepts of feedback systems and digital simulation to understand what
he famously called “the counterintuitive behavior of social systems.”
His ground-breaking 1961 book, Industrial Dynamics, remains a clear and
relevant statement of philosophy and methodology in the field. His
later books and his numerous articles broke new ground in our
understanding of complex human systems and policy problems. Jay officially retired in 1989, but continued his work unabated, focusing on promoting the use of system dynamics in K-12 education.

"The question is whether the tragedy of November 8, following that of
Brexit, can help us to avoid what comes next. In other words, can we get
away from both utopias, that of the Globe as well as that of the
Nation? What we need instead is an Earth that is solid, realistic, and
durable. Alas, at present the ecological crisis is the elephant in the
room, and yet it is as if nothing has happened, as if the choice were
still between marching bravely into the future or clinging dearly to the
past. Trump and his followers have even gone so far as to deny the very
existence of this crisis."

Tuesday, November 15, 2016

Please consider contributing by submitting an article in the area "Cybernetics and Systemics" or any other included in the 21st World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics: WMSCI 2017 (http://www.2017iiisconf.org/wmsci), to be held on July 8 - 11, 2017, in Orlando, Florida, USA, jointly with:

The 11th International Multi-Conference on Society, Cybernetics, and Informatics: IMSCI 2017

The 15th International Conference on Education and Information Systems, Technologies and Applications: EISTA 2017

The 10th International Multi-Conference on Engineering and Technological Innovation: IMETI 2017

To submit your article, please click the "Authors" tab on the conference website. Submissions for face-to-face and virtual presentations are both accepted.

The deadlines for this second CFP are the following:

December 7th, 2016: Article submissions

December 7th, 2016: Invited session proposals

January 18th, 2017: Notifications of acceptance

February 14th, 2017: Uploading of camera-ready or final version

WMSCI and all its collocated events are being indexed by Elsevier's SCOPUS since 2005. The 2017 proceedings will also be sent to Elsevier's SCOPUS.

Authors of early submissions to WMSCI 2017 (or any of its collocated events) and, consequently, of early acceptances and registrations will be:

Considered in the selection of keynote speakers because this selection will need additional reviews.

Invited for submitting a second paper on special topics; which, if accepted, will require no additional fee for its presentation.
These topics, which will be selected by the Organizing Committee, are
very important topics, but are not necessarily among the usual grants
priorities. The IIIS will finance this kind of papers which are
important for many authors but are not among the priorities of policy
makers in organizations which might financially be supporting
participations in conferences.

Details about the following issues have also been included at the URLs given above:

Pre- and post-conference virtual sessions.

Virtual participation.

Two-tier reviewing combining double-blind and non-blind methods.

Access to reviewers’ comments and evaluation average.

Waiving the registration fee of effective invited session organizers.

Best papers awards.

Publication
of best papers in the Journal of Systemics, Cybernetics, and
Informatics (JSCI), which is indexed in EBSCO, Cabell, DOAJ (Directory
of Open Access Journals), and Google Scholar, and listed in Cabell
Directory of Publishing Opportunities and in Ulrich’s Periodical
Directory. (All papers to be presented at the conference will be
included in the conference printed and electronic proceedings)

Please consider forwarding to the appropriate groups who might be
interested in submitting contribution to the above mentioned collocated
events. New information and deadlines are posted on the conference and
the IIIS web site (especially at the URL provided above).

You will be able to enjoy Heinz explaining his ideas in a most entertaining, inspiring and precise way.

However, our celebration is overshadowed by the message that Aartje Hulstein passed away two days ago.

Aartje
(born in the Netherlands on 1.11.1950 and died in Southsea, UK, on
11.11.2016), the widow of Ranulph Glanville, was not only a close friend
and supporter of the Heinz von Foerster Society, she has been present
at a large number of cybernetics-, systems-, and
constructivism-conferences. She (together with Claudia Westermann)
contributed large parts of the book “Trojan Horses. A Rattle Bag from
the »Cybernetics: Art, Design, Mathematics – A Meta-Disciplinary
Conversation« post-conference workshop”, ed. by Ranulph Glanville et al.
edition echoraum, Vienna 2012.

In
her professional life, Aartje acted as a most successful physical
therapist with disabled children in England, permanently implementing
second order cybernetics methods and ideas in her field while always
observing the individuality of the child.

We lost one of the most dearest and loveable persons in our field. We will always keep her in our memories.

Sunday, July 17, 2016

My grandfather, Col White arrived on the Western Front in July 1916 via Marsailles and Egypt. He had been drafted into the 114th Howitzer Battery, 5th Division AIF. On the 15th July 1916 they went into the front in preparation for the assault known as the Battle of Fromelles, 1916. This battle began on the 19th July 1916.

"In a period of twenty-four hours the Australians lost 5,533 men and the
British 1,400 with absolutely nothing to show for it. The proportion of
those killed was exceptionally high, for example of the 887 men of the
Australian 60th Battalion engaged in the battle only 107 survived"

Col (CKB White) was fortunate to survive the war. He later led an active life as a grazier and in civic life in Bathurst NSW.

Monday, July 04, 2016

"As a crop, corn is highly productive, flexible and successful. As a system, the same is not true."

"with the current corn system dominating our use of natural resources and
public dollars, while delivering less food and nutrition than other
agricultural systems, it’s time ask tough questions and demand better
solutions" argues Jonathan Foley.

Wednesday, June 29, 2016

I like so many others have been incredibly saddened and disturbed by the outcomes of last week's vote. Amongst the many emotions, particularly those of loss, anger soon emerges at the intellectual vacuousness of those who have been placed into the roles of leading the country. What is more, few commentators see it is the systemic failure of the 'UK governance system', a failing that has been ongoing for many years...as this article from Philip Pullman illuminates.

A dear friend has articulated the grief many of us are experiencing in the following terms:

Dear X, thanks for your note! I hope you don't mind but I am so sore and
disturbed that I cannot help adding some comment on what's afoot.

A brief grieving:
How does a govt that got around 24 % of the vote in the last elections
now dare to act and speak in the name of the nation after leading it
into an unecessary referendum
to resolve an internal party struggle? ?

How is it that neither the left
nor the right of the political specturm understood the consequences of
the damage to [male, white] identity as secure employment in mining,
agric, ship building, steel etc. left the towns,
docks, and rural areas? How is it that the elderly, with dreams of
empire and former glory, can have such influence on the future of a
country? How do the nation's great and good get away with outrageous
lies without accountability?

How is it possible for
a nation to contemplate electing as the new PM someone who has no admin
ability, and who has lied time and again in his quest for power? [his
personality and abilities are well known on the continent and for sure,
tho some in the UK might think he can re-unify
the differences in the UK, he would not be seen as a responsible or
competent person to lead negotiations with the other 27 countries, thus
increasing the likelihood of worse coutcomes].

And whatever side of the
debates anyone stands on, it's simply terrifying
that there appears to have been so little preparation for, and
understanding of what the social, political, economic and constitutional
consequences of a referendum might be - utterly, utterly irresponsible.

The debates now seem focussed on matters internal
to the UK. In following these debates, I am also constantly struck by
how little understanding of or consideration anyone in Westminster or
the country at large - or the BBC - has given to how members of the
other 27 countries might actually perceive the issues,
and the consequences,or, come to that, how Commonwealth countries, the
US, Russia or China might view these events.

I live in the NL and I am
sure that the UK will not be able to get both
access to the single market and
control of free movement, nor access to the single market without
financial contributions, nor access and a rejection of the European
Court of Justice.
And [almost!] worst of all, as a resident of more than 15 yrs in the EU I
do not have the right of vote. This is in itself surely a scandalous
denial of basic rights to over 2 million Brits; there are now in effect
two classes of British citizenship. Democratic
provisions seem to have fallen down big time - bah! and boo!

Great article from Simon Caulkin. Here is a flavour:"Not a day passes without some fresh underlining of Baum’s message
(and it’s not just the US): fraud at FIFA, in athletics and in tennis;
Tesco exploiting suppliers; Sports Direct exploiting employees;
charities (for God’s sake) exploiting donors; yet more bank penalties
(up to a global $150bn since the financial crisis and counting); Libor
fallout; Kids’ Company; and VW.

There is, of course, a link between all these organisations. Their misfortunes were made by the people who work in them. They were manmade, or, to be clearer, management-made"

N.B. Mark Baum is the character based on a real-life investor, in The Big Short, the 2015 film adaptation of Michael Lewis’s unpicking of 2008’s global financial crisis. Baum is a capitalist investor, not a revolutionary.

Friday, June 17, 2016

I have
already voted in the UK referendum concerning the UK's future in Europe. I
voted remain.As a researcher in Europe
and UK resident (some of it part time) for 22 years I have come to see myself
as essentially European. As I have written elsewhere I have regarded the EU as
one of the greatest and most needed experiments in governance in the last two
centuries.

Despite the
millions of words written and spoken about "Brexit", as it has become
known, nothing has shifted my fundamental conviction that Britain, and the rest
of the world, will be better off with the UK inside Europe.Little that has been written or said about
"Brexit" is intelligent or insightful.There is little acknowledgement that
successive UK governments abandoned responsibility for shaping and improving
Europe. Cameron's last minute dash for reform was far too little and too late.
It also elicited cynicism conditioned by internal Tory Party power struggles.
The great tragedy, and perhaps great shock for many, is that when the lid was
taken off, when citizens were enabled (well sort of!) to participate in a
'conversation' about the UK and its future, very few people had a narrative, a
story they could tell themselves, about Europe. The emergent narrative is one
of disaffection and fear, and stories that hark back to an imaginary period
when Britian was 'great'!That this is a
myth shows how powerful narratives can be.

"There’s a more than respectable
progressive case for voting to leave the European Union in the forthcoming UK
referendum. It’s set out here by the Guardian’s economics editor Larry Elliott,
someone I like and respect. The lack of democratic accountability, the
austerity that has driven Greece to its knees when it voted for the opposite,
the failure of the euro, the inability to come together over Putin and
migration, the environmental and other failings detailed by another Guardian
writer, George Monbiot – all these are dagger blows at the heart of the limping
half-century-old European project, and they can’t be wished away.

Yet I passionately believe that we
should remain, and shall have no hesitation in voting so on 23 June.

My reasons are personal, historical
and political.

First, having married into a French
family, half my close relatives are French. I care about what happens to France
and know at first hand that for all the cross-Channel barbs and
incomprehension, the French on the whole, like other Europeans, care about us
too. Read this letter of affection in the TLS signed by, among others,
footballers, football managers and rugby players, authors, architects,
restaurateurs, actors and film directors, and musicians from Greece to Sweden,
Italy to Poland. Or these. Despite our best current efforts to make ourselves
as dislikeable as possible, Europeans believe that traditional British
tolerance and fortitude are an important counterweight to different continental
qualities – and any honest inhabitant of these islands would have to
acknowledge that the trade is equally advantageous in the other direction.

There is another personal reason. My
father’s physical and intellectual journey from committed pacifist to
lieutenant in a reconnaissance regiment fighting its way through Belgium, the
Netherlands and Germany in 1944 and 1945 is vividly preserved in the letters
that he wrote home at the time. Reading them now, there is not the shadow of a
doubt that he and his colleagues knew perfectly well that they weren't only
fighting for their and their own families’ futures; for them, the terrible
bloodshed and mayhem that they witnessed (and suffered – my father was killed a
week before the armistice) was only redeemable by a settlement that cemented
all the nations affected, including the defeated, in a binding democratic
embrace. (So well did these soldiers do their peacetime work that, as I only
realised much later, German teenagers in the British occupied zone grew up as
familiar with the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and other icons of British
popular culture as I did; while the German postwar economic miracle owed much
to the company governance regime of two-tier boards and co-determination
instituted under strong influence from our own TUC.)

I’m dismayed that the remain camp has
ignored these broader issues to focus on the economy and Project Fear. I don’t
doubt that there would be short-term shocks to the economy from a Brexit, but
that's not why I'm voting to remain. I don't trust any of the numbers. But more
than that, to collapse the European idea to name-calling over numbers, as both
sides have done, is both embarrassingly reductive and beside the point. Given
the government’s well proven ability, not least over the last eight years, to
make a pig’s ear of the economy without any outside assistance, using economic
freedom from Brussels as a rallying cry for leave is almost comically brazen.
There is a real economic argument to be had, about the nature and purpose of
business, but like all the other important issues we face, it can only be
addressed at supra-national level. Only at EU level is it conceivable that a
counterweight could be developed to the dangerous arrogance of Silicon Valley
and the excesses of US finance and shareholder-dominated capitalism.

As for immigration, the shrill, angry
discourse about migrants reminds me of efforts 20 years ago to block the
building of the Channel Tunnel for fear it would bring in an epidemic of
rabies. Scapegoating is as old as history. But so, as a dispassionate New
Scientist analysis reminded us recently, are waves of human migration, the
inseparable companion of wars, famine, natural disaster and, although this is
usually left out, gross global inequality. Of course, it would be mad to deny
that an influx of incomers seeking a new life creates uncomfortable issues. But
they can be managed, as they have been before, by tackling them head on with
thought, effort, sympathy and state help, usually temporary, with cost. For
those responsible for austerity to whip up anti-migrant feeling by blaming the
latter for stretched public services and lack of affordable housing is
breathtaking in its dishonesty, while to believe that any country can pull up
the drawbridge and shut out these global tides is wishful thinking of the most
vapid kind.

Also disappointing is the narrow
vision of other European leaders who don't seem to see the UK referendum for
what it is, an existential challenge that can only be met by imaginative and
sweeping restatement of what Europe is for. ‘What has happened to you, the
Europe of humanism, the champion of human rights, democracy and freedom? What
has happened to you, Europe, the home of poets, philosophers, artists,
musicians, and men and women of letters? What has happened to you, Europe, the
mother of peoples and nations, the mother of great men and women who upheld,
and even sacrificed their lives for, the dignity of their brothers and
sisters?’ I’m not aware of having quoted the Pope before, but the reproach
implicit in the questions he raised in his Charlemagne award speech can't be
easily swept aside.

Europe,’ as Churchill once put it,
‘is where the weather comes from’. The migration surge welling up from the
Mediterranean, the Eurozone crisis and the outbreaks of right-wing populism all
underline that that’s as true today as it ever was; and now as then it’s no
more possible for Britain to negotiate an opt-out than from European isobars or
the Gulf Stream. We’re in, and we have to deal with it. Do we face up to the challenge,
or run away in a way that we never have before? What’s at risk in this
misconceived referendum, it’s now apparent, is not our economic future but our
soul, our identity and an idea of Europe that our parents and grandparents
helped to shape 70 years ago."

Like Simon I
have family connections to war in Europe (though without such devastating
personal outcomes). 2016 is the centenary of my grandfather's induction into
war on the Western Front. As a young Australian he also went to war to fight
for the European ideal - to fight tyranny, hegemony, and the attempted
imposition of belief through bullying and violence. This is worth remembering
and honouring.

Tuesday, June 14, 2016

"The
ECPR's General Conference is the largest political science event in
Europe, bringing some 2,000 political scientists together every autumn.
The 2016 Conference will be held at Charles University, Prague"

"The
Interpretive Turn (Fischer and Forester, 1993; Wagenaar, 2011) has
introduced hermeneutic and discursive methods in the analysis of public
policy. Approaches such as narrative analysis, frame analysis,
governmentality, Critical Discourse Analysis and poststructuralist
political theory are increasingly common in the discipline and practice
of policy studies. These foster a politically and socially relevant
policy analysis that is both appreciative and critical of daily policy
practice and the argumentative and discursive processes that constitute
it.

Of these, a ‘second wave’ of interpretive approaches is
distinctive in incorporating anti-dualist or relational elements.
Examples are practice theory (Shove et. al, 2013; Nicolini, 2013;
Schatzki et al., 2001; Cook and Wagenaar, 2012), process philosophy
(Stout & Love, 2015), critical pragmatism (Forester, 2013; Healey,
2007; Griggs et al., 2014, Ansell, 2011), collaborative governance
(Ansell and Gash, 2008; Innes and Booher, 2011), discursive
institutionalism (Carstensen 2015), the strategic-relational approach
(Jessop, 2005) and co-production and action research (Reason, 1988;
Bartels & Wittmayer, 2014). At the same time, the relational element
within this body of research has not been fully articulated. Drawing on
ideas from the new relational sociology (Emirbayer 1997) would
contribute to developing this dimension of policy research by
contributing to a more fully-fledged relational policy analysis, with
the potential to integrate interpretive, constructivist and other new
institutionalist theories of policymaking.

Although seemingly
disparate and originating in different philosophical traditions, these
approaches share a number of ontological and epistemological principles
that set them apart from first-generation interpretive policy analysis."

Relational approaches attempt to overcome the traditional dualisms of
social and political science (structure vs. agency, knowing vs. acting,
human vs. material) by conceiving of the world in terms of ongoing
events and dynamic processes generated by recursively related elements
(e.g. while action is shaped by structure, structure is reproduced
trough action).

Ontologically our world is a world of becoming. It
is open-ended, complex and unpredictable. Therefore, strong control is a
misguided ideal; harnessing complexity is a more realistic prospect.

Relational approaches emphasize the power dynamics inherent in all social exchanges.

In terms of practical implications, in relational approaches knowledge
is not aimed at finality and (intellectual or physical) control. Instead
knowledge has the character of an encounter; between individuals or
between individuals and the world. Knowledge is fundamentally bilateral,
dialogical, and provisional (Wagenaar, 2011, ch. 8). It aims as much at
shared understanding as at joint transformation.

We know the world
by acting on it. In the epistemology of anti-dualism knowledge is
performative. Relational approaches do not play down the importance of
language, but they emphasize the primacy of practice, and the way that
practice mediates language and vice versa. Intervening, knowing,
learning and transformation are inextricably linked in practice and
inquiry.

Experience is central in our dealings with the world.
Experience is not an individual feeling, but instead a web of relations
that ties individuals into the world. In relational approaches there is a
fundamental awareness that we are inescapably woven into ecological and
social webs.

Materiality is central. Things, technologies the
stuff the word is made of, are repositories of understandings,
competences, meaning and traditions. They make our actions possible, and
constrain and afford them, by structuring them but also by resisting
our interventions.

In their emphasis on joint acting, warranted
assertability (exposure to recalcitrant experience), the fusion of
practical and moral judgment, and the importance of open, deliberative
forums, relational approaches bring out the ‘intelligence of democracy’
but also the limitations of contemporary liberal-electoral institutions.

The authors' claims for the MOOC are to "Understand the four main elements of Global Systems Science.....This free online course will help you understand
the four main elements of Global Systems Science, and how they can work
together to create better formulated policy with better outcomes:

1. Policy at all levels, from individuals to the world:
we will begin with policy problems at global and national scales. How
can these problems be tackled? How can we know which, if any, proposed
policy options will work.2. The new, interdisciplinary approach:
we will explore how the science of complex social, economic, political,
biological, physical and environmental systems can inform policy makers
in their work.3. Data science and computational modelling for policy makers: we will look at so-called “policy informatics” – the new, policy-oriented methods of modelling complex systems on computers.4. Citizen engagement: a central
concept of GSS is that the behaviour of social systems emerges
bottom-up, from the interactions of individuals and institutions, in the
context of top-down policy constraints. We will explore what this means
in practice – why individual citizens must be involved in decision
making and policy formulation."

‘STEPS: to a systemic ecology of mind (with apologies to Gregory Bateson)’

By Ray Ison

My
seminar will cover a broad sweep of issues under the general rubric of
building systemic governing capability in the context of the
Anthropocene. My starting point will be to lay down a challenge as to
whether those present have a systemic ecology of mind? I will then
unpack what I consider to be significant limitations in much
contemporary scholarship because of failures to understand: the 'feral
concept' of system; praxis, or more specifically systems praxis;
complexity, or complex adaptive system; transformation and governance,
or governing. I will ground the seminar in examples from recent
research projects that employ, or are concerned with, social learning
and systemic inquiry. In the discussion we can explore implications for
the STEPs programme.

Ray
Ison has an international reputation in, and has been a major
contributor to, ‘cybersystemics’. What is this field you may well ask?
Ray's rationale for using this term was explained in the presentation
last year at ISSS2016 in Berlin of his Presidential Address for the
International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS), and also in a
special ‘systemic inquiry’ at Herrenhausen Palace, Hanover details of
which can be found at this Blog site.

Amongst
other matters raised at these events was the significant institutional
complexity in the cybersystemic field and the lack of intellectual and
political influence for investment in and the furtherance of
cybersystemic scholarship – particularly in key policy and research
funding fora associated with the UN, Brussels, Washington and the like.
This is despite the growing awareness that the issues of our time, the
Anthropocene, if you will, are systemic in nature and thus require
systemic responses, i.e., transformations. Ray has been Professor of
Systems at The Open University (OU), UK since 1994.

Monday, June 06, 2016

As millions of words are written in the pursuit of election outcomes in Australia (on July 2nd) and the future of the UK in Europe, it is a pity that so little of it is relevant to our current (human) circumstances. Intelligence, as an emergent property of what is being written, is in short supply! In contrast, essays such as "The Church of Economism and its Discontents" by Richard Norgaard, point to deep, important 'truths' about our situation that deserve attention.

Dick Norgaard, himself a graduate of the Chicago School in economics, has become one of 'economism's' - the
reduction of all social relations to market logic - most articulate critics. He justifiably claims:

"Economists
themselves have acknowledged the ultimately religious nature of their
discipline. In 1932, Frank Knight, the most scholarly and broad-thinking
of the founders of the influential market-oriented Chicago school of
economics, literally argued that economics, at a fundamental level, had
to be a religion, the basic tenets of which must be hidden from all but a
few.."

His argument is that:

Economism [is] a widely held system of faith. This modern “religion” is essential
for the maintenance of the global market economy, for justifying
personal decisions, and for explaining and rationalizing the cosmos we
have created. This uncritical economic creed has colonized other
disciplines, including ecology, as ecologists increasingly rely on
economistic logic to rationalize the protection of ecosystems."

Economists
themselves have acknowledged the ultimately religious nature of their
discipline. In 1932, Frank Knight, the most scholarly and broad-thinking
of the founders of the influential market-oriented Chicago school of
economics, literally argued that economics, at a fundamental level, had
to be a religion, the basic tenets of which must be hidden from all but a
few: - See more at:
http://www.greattransition.org/publication/the-church-of-economism-and-its-discontents#sthash.FnT89crd.dpuf

omists
themselves have acknowledged the ultimately religious nature of their
discipline. In 1932, Frank Knight, the most scholarly and broad-thinking
of the founders of the influential market-oriented Chicago school of
economics, literally argued that economics, at a fundamental level, had
to be a religion, the basic tenets of which must be hidden from all but a
few:

The point is that the “principles” by which a
society or a group lives in tolerable harmony are essentially religious.
The essential nature of a religious principle is that not merely is it
immoral to oppose it, but to ask what it is, is morally identical with
denial and attack.

There must be ultimates, and they must be
religious, in economics as anywhere else, if one has anything to say
touching conduct or social policy in a practical way. Man is a believing
animal and to few, if any, is it given to criticize the foundations of
belief “intelligently.”

To inquire into the ultimates behind
accepted group values is obscene and sacrilegious: objective inquiry is
an attempt to uncover the nakedness of man, his soul as well as his
body, his deeds, his culture, and his very gods.

Certainly the
large general [economics] courses should be prevented from raising any
question about objectivity, but should assume the objectivity of the
slogans they inculcate, as a sacred feature of the system.8

When I show students these passages in my lectures, they gasp,
finally understanding why economics is taught so differently from the
other social sciences, why it is presented so uncritically, as if it
were a science when it obviously is not.
- See more at: http://www.greattransition.org/publication/the-church-of-economism-and-its-discontents#sthash.FnT89crd.dpuf

Economists
themselves have acknowledged the ultimately religious nature of their
discipline. In 1932, Frank Knight, the most scholarly and broad-thinking
of the founders of the influential market-oriented Chicago school of
economics, literally argued that economics, at a fundamental level, had
to be a religion, the basic tenets of which must be hidden from all but a
few:

The point is that the “principles” by which a
society or a group lives in tolerable harmony are essentially religious.
The essential nature of a religious principle is that not merely is it
immoral to oppose it, but to ask what it is, is morally identical with
denial and attack.

There must be ultimates, and they must be
religious, in economics as anywhere else, if one has anything to say
touching conduct or social policy in a practical way. Man is a believing
animal and to few, if any, is it given to criticize the foundations of
belief “intelligently.”

To inquire into the ultimates behind
accepted group values is obscene and sacrilegious: objective inquiry is
an attempt to uncover the nakedness of man, his soul as well as his
body, his deeds, his culture, and his very gods.

Certainly the
large general [economics] courses should be prevented from raising any
question about objectivity, but should assume the objectivity of the
slogans they inculcate, as a sacred feature of the system.8

When I show students these passages in my lectures, they gasp,
finally understanding why economics is taught so differently from the
other social sciences, why it is presented so uncritically, as if it
were a science when it obviously is not.
- See more at: http://www.greattransition.org/publication/the-church-of-economism-and-its-discontents#sthash.FnT89crd.dpuf

Economists
themselves have acknowledged the ultimately religious nature of their
discipline. In 1932, Frank Knight, the most scholarly and broad-thinking
of the founders of the influential market-oriented Chicago school of
economics, literally argued that economics, at a fundamental level, had
to be a religion, the basic tenets of which must be hidden from all but a
few:

The point is that the “principles” by which a
society or a group lives in tolerable harmony are essentially religious.
The essential nature of a religious principle is that not merely is it
immoral to oppose it, but to ask what it is, is morally identical with
denial and attack.

There must be ultimates, and they must be
religious, in economics as anywhere else, if one has anything to say
touching conduct or social policy in a practical way. Man is a believing
animal and to few, if any, is it given to criticize the foundations of
belief “intelligently.”

To inquire into the ultimates behind
accepted group values is obscene and sacrilegious: objective inquiry is
an attempt to uncover the nakedness of man, his soul as well as his
body, his deeds, his culture, and his very gods.

Certainly the
large general [economics] courses should be prevented from raising any
question about objectivity, but should assume the objectivity of the
slogans they inculcate, as a sacred feature of the system.8

When I show students these passages in my lectures, they gasp,
finally understanding why economics is taught so differently from the
other social sciences, why it is presented so uncritically, as if it
were a science when it obviously is not.
- See more at: http://www.greattransition.org/publication/the-church-of-economism-and-its-discontents#sthash.FnT89crd.dpuf

Economists
themselves have acknowledged the ultimately religious nature of their
discipline. In 1932, Frank Knight, the most scholarly and broad-thinking
of the founders of the influential market-oriented Chicago school of
economics, literally argued that economics, at a fundamental level, had
to be a religion, the basic tenets of which must be hidden from all but a
few:

The point is that the “principles” by which a
society or a group lives in tolerable harmony are essentially religious.
The essential nature of a religious principle is that not merely is it
immoral to oppose it, but to ask what it is, is morally identical with
denial and attack.

There must be ultimates, and they must be
religious, in economics as anywhere else, if one has anything to say
touching conduct or social policy in a practical way. Man is a believing
animal and to few, if any, is it given to criticize the foundations of
belief “intelligently.”

To inquire into the ultimates behind
accepted group values is obscene and sacrilegious: objective inquiry is
an attempt to uncover the nakedness of man, his soul as well as his
body, his deeds, his culture, and his very gods.

Certainly the
large general [economics] courses should be prevented from raising any
question about objectivity, but should assume the objectivity of the
slogans they inculcate, as a sacred feature of the system.8

When I show students these passages in my lectures, they gasp,
finally understanding why economics is taught so differently from the
other social sciences, why it is presented so uncritically, as if it
were a science when it obviously is not.
- See more at: http://www.greattransition.org/publication/the-church-of-economism-and-its-discontents#sthash.FnT89crd.dpuf